Für Deutschland? (“For Germany?”) ExhibitionMemory, Democracy and Future

Alicia Rieke is studying art education at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and at the LMU. In her transmedia practice, she combines graphic art, photography, videography and objects. Her work explores remembrance culture and language as well as social and political issues, examining how stories, symbols and images shape our perception. She lives and works in Munich.

• Trümmerfrauen takes the Munich Trümmerfrauen stone as its starting point. The stone is a memorial to the women living in the aftermath of the Second World War and a place where memory, myth and political interpretation collide. It has become a symbol of reconstruction, protest and historical responsibility. The installation explores the culture of remembrance, historiography and the political exploitation of the past. It also questions how we deal with historical narratives.

Anna Knöller studied scenography and media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, and stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, graduating with a diploma in both subjects. In her artistic research, she explores performative structures within legal systems, as well as the staging of the administration of justice as a social and spatial practice. She lives and works in Munich. Her work has been exhibited in Berlin, Mannheim and Munich, amongst other places.

• Snippets of Silence refers to the NSU trial (2013–2018) against the National Socialist Underground terrorist organisation at the Munich Higher Regional Court, which was one of the most widely covered criminal trials in post-war Germany. Taking newspaper reports on the silence of the defendant, Beate Zschäpe, which were a canvas for interpretations by the media at the time, the artist blacks out all content except for the word “silence”. She then transfers the resulting bar patterns onto strips of paper for a barrel organ, thereby translating them – and hence the widely-reported silence – into sound that becomes part of the installation.
• Saal 600 (“Courtroom 600”) takes Courtroom 600 – the venue for the Nuremberg Trials – as its starting point. Textile reliefs reconstruct the changing seating and table arrangements in the courtroom and juxtapose them with their respective symbolic frameworks – the Emperor, Hitler, the Nuremberg Trials and the cross. Examining seating arrangements as spatial structures that define lines of sight, communication pathways, distances and hierarchies, the study turns the courtroom into a spatial diagram in which notions of law, power and social order are inscribed within the architecture itself.

Anvita Jain grew up in India in a family of traditional jewellers. Shaped by discussions about dowries and financial investments, she developed a complex relationship with jewellery. Through her work, she explores social and cultural issues. She founded the research project Project Bawra and is currently furthering her practice on the Jewellery and Objects programme at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

• Ghar’ am Masala explores the multifaceted experience of diaspora identity. The houses, made of spices, unite memories of the artist’s Indian heritage with her current life in Germany. The title is a play on words combining the Hindi word “ghar” (home), garam masala (hot spices) and the “am” in names of German towns. This work explores the home as a cultural and emotional space and highlights the importance of spices in everyday life, rituals and identity.
• Transcu(rry)ltural Moves is a conceptual work that utilises objects, paper and photography. Taking curry ketchup – a German invention utilising colonial spice imports – as her starting point, she explores cultural transfer, Western projections onto Indian culture, and post-migrant identities in the public sphere. This work uses an everyday consumer product to highlight transcultural interconnections, colonial narratives and cultural appropriation.

Gina-Marie Bross is a student at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Her interest lies with places, perspectives and routines that elude our immediate understanding, yet nevertheless shape our everyday lives. Lying at the intersection of research, documentation and imagination, her work reveals the spatial and social dynamics of power, violence and exclusion, and the longing for other places.

• RAL-6031 brings together fragments of a present in which war is increasingly becoming part of everyday life. An open, collaborative archive, the work traces the material and aesthetic manifestations of this development. Drawing on observations of public space, the artist examines how political rhetoric, media images and social sentiments create a reality in which military logic is increasingly taken for granted.

Jonas Lewek is a conceptual and media artist who studied under Eberhard Bosslet at the Dresden University of Fine Arts from 2007 to 2015. His work focuses on social issues, new technologies and the art world. His choice of medium results from whichever concept he is tackling. His works have been exhibited in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Manchester, Porto and Yogyakarta. He lives and works in Munich.

• World Flags explores national flags as an expression of national image and identity. Taking the flags of every country in the world as his starting point, the artist has randomly selected a single graphic element from each flag and then had these automatically assembled into new flags. Against the backdrop of the growing influence of ultra-nationalist and right-wing ideologies, this work sets out a vision of a world in which people, rather than states, take centre stage.

Lena-K studied media art at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She lives and works in Munich. Combining painting, sculpture, performance and video, she creates works exploring womanhood, anti-fascism, memory and social transformation. She curates exhibitions, founded the Lotse collective and has played a key role in the Für Deutschland? exhibition.

• Residuum explores the legacy of Nazi memorabilia, taking as its starting point the so-called SS-Ehrenring – the “honour ring” bestowed by Heinrich Himmler to SS members of distinction and featuring a human skull. By melting the rings down and transforming them into abstract silver forms, the work examines how we deal with historical responsibility and recasts memory as an active social process. A performative piece, presented as a video and sound installation, the work creates a link between past and present and examines the importance of democratic action. The resulting sculptures are exhibited as abstract mementos.

Natalia Schmidt lives and works in Munich, Berlin and Paris. She combines photography, film, sculpture, music, performance and long-term research into a process-oriented practice that re-examines the documentary and ethical value of images.

• Frage an Speer: Kann man einen Boden erneuern? (M8x57IS)  (“Question to Speer: Can one renew a floor?”) is part of the ongoing Ammunition Project: A Composition on Invisible Hands. Based on an archaeological and genealogical examination of German arms and ammunition production, as well as the politically legitimised arms trade conducted by the former German arms manufacturers Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM), this work explores the ethical dimensions and the (neo-)colonial conditions underlying arms and ammunition production.

The Werk70 collective emerged from collaboration, artistic exchange and friendship. The three artists explore contemporary cultural and social issues through the traditional craft of woodcarving, as well as through animation, film and photography. The dialogue between them is a deliberate part of their shared artistic practice.

• Killababy is a project by Anton Kappla, Franca Klier and Yaroslava Garanda. The work invites us to take a critical look at the current zeitgeist and to engage with the wars of our time. The artists call for peace and justice as the foundation of human coexistence and question the effectiveness of armament and oppression. The rotating cylinder symbolises the cycle of war and supposed peace, as social pressure becomes apparent in both the literal and figurative senses. The carefully considered choice of printing medium allows this sensation to also be experienced on a physical level.